Elizabeth and Her Mountain Garden

Abstract

In this essay the author suggests that Elizabeth von Arnim’s anonymous novel In the Mountains (1920) can be regarded as a modernist work, and is best understood in this context. The author indicates why von Arnim was intellectually and spiritually ready to develop her writing along these lines in the post-First World War era. This novel, like von Arnim’s early works—Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) and The Solitary Summer (1899)—is written in the form of a journal; the title, also like those of her early works, points to a symbolic setting derived from nature. However, the narrator of In the Mountains no longer appears as ‘Elizabeth’, but remains mysteriously and completely anonymous. This device, together with von Arnim’s stylistically innovative use of structures and motifs derived from nature and music, as well as her manipulation of time, perception and memory, demonstrates her unique approach to modern writing in this novel, inviting comparison with contemporary works by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.

Keywords:

• Elizabeth von Arnim
• avant-garde
• nature
• gardens
• anonymous narrator
• journal
• music
• rhythm
• time
• modernist features
• First World War
• Virginia Woolf
• Katherine Mansfield

Notes

1 Mary Beauchamp married Count von Arnim in 1891 and adopted the writing persona Elizabeth when writing her first novel.

2 Richardson's Pilgrimage, including ‘Dimple Hill’ and ‘March Moonlight’, was published by Dent in 1967.

3 An avid reader, von Arnim always read the latest novels reviewed in the literary magazines of the day.

4 ‘I will sing my own song’.

5 Von Arnim's readers would have recognized the allusion to the hero of Wagner's Ring Cycle here.